You just failed the test.
The fact is, some people deserve harsh judgement. Including people who lie to someone and think they are morally superior for doing so.
I don't care for the philosophy/politics, but I've read a lot of good sci-fi that I didn't care for the philosophy behind. I like Starship Troopers, which isn't as fascist as some people think but is certainly right-wing. I like Orson Scott Card, regardless of what I think of his opinions on gay people. I like the Culture novels, which are lowkey anarcho-communist. I like China Mieville, and he's an unsubtle hardcore Marxist.
Those are all much better than Rand, but not totally out of the ballpark (I think the Fountainhead is actually much better written than Atlas Shrugged).
I agree with the original thread comment: people who can't separate literary and political merit are usually pretty tiresome in lots of other ways.
Somehow I've missed a whole range of books from 80's through early 2000's.
Before I made a judgement about someone making that claim, I'd need to know in what way it 'changed their life'.
i'm with the parent commenter here as i find your response very much telling on how you evaluate things and frankly, more idiotic than someone's life being changed, even by the "intended" interpretation of the book
e.g. would you say that everyone who liked / was influenced by reading "mein kampf" is a nazi?
Who start reading "mein kampf" beside scholar anyway?
Edit: so if you read and like it there is something wrong with you
People who only read things they agree with means they're blind to the problems with it, and fold like wet cardboard when they try to argue it.
I haven't actually started it yet, but I have a copy on my shelf waiting. Along with Das Kapital, Mao's "Little Red Book", etc.
Why? Especially given that I'm closer to a Randian than anything else (I really did like Atlas Shrugged although it's not my favorite book). Well, I feel like if you're going to reject a belief system, or feel somewhat at-odds with followers of a given system of thought or whatever, it's best to have some familiarity with that system of thought. It's just a matter of intellectual honesty.
I mean, looking back over the years here on HN and the various discussions that pop up around Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand. You can tell that a LOT of the people criticizing Rand and Atlas Shrugged have never read the book (or probably any of her other works) and are attacking straw-men.
I refrain from (most) attacks on Marx (and the specifics of what Hitler, Mao, etc had to say) because I don't have the deep familiarity with their material. OTOH, I have no problem saying I have enough general familiarity to mostly reject the thinking of those folks in a sort of abstract sense. The point being, one may read a work that you disagree with (or expect to disagree with) just so you can have an intellectually honest conversation about it, or a deeper conversation that goes beyond a superficial familiarity.
It's crazy how many people essentially jumped at their throat with obnoxious comments and even outright ridiculing the poster (see the "checkers/chess" comment as an example).
Quite literally the author explained the whole reasoning and they still "failed the test".
I haven't even read atlas shrugged but I guess at this point I'm curious to read it and possibly adopt a similar strategy: it's clearly working way better than intended.
You can test someone’s general health with an eye exam, but it’s still an eye exam.
But if you like her long-winded style, have fun! It's a long one.